Solomon ‘passes’ his nine month check – I fail

My lovely Health Visitor came round on Friday partly to see if Solomon’s thrush has cleared up (it has) but also to give him the Nine Month Check.

Here are the results…{shuffles papers in a newsreader stylee}

He is the right length. He weight is a little under normal. His head is too small. He can sit with aid and follow a toy with his eyes. He will respond to noise and is getting to recognise his carers. He can grasp some objects and is showing interest in food.

All these boxes were ticked as my child was standing unaided with a huge piece of watermelon in his hands that he was munching on. He doesn’t just ‘recognise’ me, he crawls at me shouting “MUM MUM MUM”, he also knows “Da Da” for Rob and “Braw braw” for Osiris. Health Visitor (hereon known as HV) asked most of the questions in a mocking tone whilst she was watching Solomon doing things that they don’t check for until they are two. HV is very sympathetic to my no-nonsense stance with charts and interference from the system and laughed when his head size came out as too small and said “Well there’s plenty of brains in there”.

I also filled out a quick survey they give you to try and catch Post-Natal Depression. The questions were stupidly simplistic to try and convey any sense of how a woman feeling depressed would feel. E.g. “Do you find it hard to laugh at things and see the funny side?” Hey, during a breakdown you can see the funny side to EVERYTHING and can be laughing all the way to the funny farm. I was very honest and fought the urge to just pretend everything was fine in Erika’s head. Unsurprisingly my score came out at 24, which is high and means, yes I am depressed. I win a prize for my high score…the offer of anti-depressants! Woopee!

I turned them down.

I was offered some sort of counselling help and again I turned it down. As the offer of an NHS housecleaner and childminder wasn’t forthcoming I guess there was not much more she could have suggested.

Still, it left a strange taste to my day, knowing I was officially depressed. I know I am coping quite well on a day-to-day basis but then the constant scream in my head when I see the state of the house and the lack of sleep has all become background noise by now.

It’s hard to tell Rob that I feel depressed because HV told me I am. It seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway I NOT depressed…I’m just tired…soooooooo sooooooo tired.

One of the questions I had to answer was “Do you wake at night worrying about things?” What a stupid thing to ask someone who has just has a baby. You have to wake up every few hours to feed baby then sometimes that means you can’t sleep even when you want to or sometimes it means that you could sleep all the time. Worrying about things? What like? Am I looking after this baby in the right way? Whose advice do I take on childrearing? What if I fuck them up forever? What if I turn them into a mass murderer? When do you ever stop worrying as a mother? What a completely irrelevant question!

Wow…We interrupt this blog post to announce that Solomon has just taken a step unaided…walking baby here we come!

Anyway back to the matter in hand. The last question, just slipped in there like nobody would notice was “Do you ever feel like harming yourself?”

What do I say to that one huh? That’s the big one…the one they take your kids away for, the one you get sectioned for. Yet how do you distinguish between someone who “feels” like doing it and someone who does? Because to tell you, dear reader, the truth, there is a river of my blood running through my thoughts. It washes through all my emotions that I am too scared to name, it washes all this material world away, it snakes down my arms and curls in the bath water, it covers my eyes, it covers the world and I know I KNOW that it will take my pain away from me as it gushes from my veins.

Do I self harm? No, not this time. I’m a mother now and we mothers close our eyes, see the river of blood, feel what it would be like to slice through flesh and then open our eyes and smile at our children, carry on peeling the potatoes and then say in the chirpiest of tones “Dinner will be ready soon my darlings…”

I fail for Normal but I pass for Sane.

Computers steal time

Ever noticed that when you sit down to the computer time seems to behave really weirdly? That spare hour you had seems to have disappeared and you’ve only looked at a few blogs, you were going to update your own but…where did the time go? Rob sits down for a quick game and before he knows it 6 hours have passed and the birds are singing the dawn chorous. Today I have burnt 3 lots of toast when all I was doing was looking at a few pages…then I realised it was not me…it’s the computer. Time passes more quickly when you are near one. It has a Time Field around it.

Who has placed this Time Field around your electronic friend…BILL GATES CLEARLY!

Work with me…

Time is money, yup. He is the richest man ever in the universe ever, yup. HE IS STEALING YOUR TIME THROUGH YOUR COMPUTER AND TURNING IT INTO MONEY.

Or maybe the Time Field is an anomaly in the space time continuum brought about by the computer’s internal gubbins and this is being exploited by makers of software and internet thingys.

Just think about it…people who spend all day on the computer look wan and ill…LIKE THE VERY LIFE HAS BEEN SUCKED OUT OF THEM!

As I have been writing this post Pingo AND Bits and Bobs have both been on…it doesn’t take that ling to write 238 words…does it?

A look into the pit

I very foolishly decided to have a look at what these ‘lad mags’ seem to be. I have seem copies but that was several (ahem) years ago when they first came out. Oh yes, back in the heady days when they would occasionally put a picture of a MAN on the front. Skinner and Baddiel are the ones who spring to mind so that puts it back into 1996.

So I have been having a little look at what these mainstream ‘magazines’ have to offer and I am really shocked. I know I shouldn’t be…I spend a lot of time reading what other feminists have to say about them but I didn’t expect to run into such scary stuff so quickly.

Just going to the Loaded website pulled up ‘Myspace Minxes who are contactable and available’ EXCUSE ME but didn’t adult contact mags used to be sold in seedy little sex shops, at least on the top shelves of grubby newsagents but now they are available as mainstream reading. Who are these women and what kind of email are they getting now they have been ‘promoted’ by Loaded?

Then we get the ‘Casting couch’…

“Are you gorgeous and sexy? Do you want to appear in the pages of Loaded magazine? Course you do. Then pay attention, ladies. We need attractive, sexy young women to audition on our Casting Couch. That’s a leather Chesterfield where tasty young wannabe glamour stars like yourself cavort semi-naked while we take pictures. Then the readers of the world’s finest men’s mag get to vote on who they’d like to see in a proper photoshoot in the next month’s issue of Loaded. ‘casting couch’.”

Oh yes, cos all us girls are dying to be in Loaded aren't we?

There is also an obsession with the word ‘girls’ and NOWHERE does it use the word ‘women’.

Oh I had to stop looking, sorry it made my blood run cold. Even in the interests of finding out what the Patriarchal machine is up to, I cannot look at pictures of two women posing naked ‘lesing it up’ undressing each other for the delectation of the male viewer and airbrushed to within an inch of their lives. Just the over airbrushing is insulting let alone all the other stuff. It’s not even just tits…it’s full on porn. I feel sick and dirty for having looked at it and yet this stuff is not even on the top shelf. At least if something has the title ‘PORN’ you know what to expect.

I’m sorry if I seem a little ignorant of the currant trends but I do not go to work and have to mingle with the general populace. I don’t read newspapers, I listen to radio 4 and watch the BBC. My friends are mostly women and the men I know are lovely hippies who treat women like people. I just don’t get exposed to this stuff so that is why I am so surprised.

Here's a little piece of fun you can all try at home

games.rc-mir.com/game.Bonk.pong.495.html

Yes, play this 'fun' game and be safe in the knowlage that we women are all barbie clones lieing back ready to take a quick-one (we don't need to come, we groan because we have fulfilled our role) from any guy who dives on us.

LMAO

A public school teacher was arrested today at Gatwick Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Home Secretary John Reid said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the Metropolitan Police with carrying weapons of maths instruction.

"Al-gebra is a problem for us," Reid said. "They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute values. They use secret code names like 'x` and `y` and refer to themselves as `unknowns,` but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with co-ordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle".

When asked to comment on the arrest, Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking from his holiday resort before the planes stopped flying, said, "If God had wanted us to have better Weapons of Maths Instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

None of these things sound like me...what do you think?

You Should Get a MBA (Masters of Business Administration)

You're a self starter with a drive for success. You'd make a great entrepreneur.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

Your Personality Is Like Cocaine

You're dynamic, brilliant, and alluring to those who don't know you. Hyper and full of energy, you're usually the last one to leave a party. Sometimes your sharp mind gets the better of you... you're a bit paranoid!

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

Your Brain's Pattern

Your brain is always looking for the connections in life. You always amaze your friends by figuring out things first. You're also good at connecting people - and often play match maker. You see the world in fluid, flexible terms. Nothing is black or white.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

You Have Your Sarcastic Moments

While you're not sarcastic at all times, you definitely have a cynical edge. In your opinion, not all people are annoying. Some are dead! And although you do have your genuine moments, you can't help getting your zingers in. Some people might be a little hurt by your sarcasm, but it's more likely they think you're hilarious.

How Sarcastic Are You?

Seething curling mass of female fleash greets shopper

I’ve never felt it as fear before…I knew it was out there, I knew It was tring to get me, but I’d felt anger, resistance and annoyance to it before. Today I felt fear.

What am I talking about? Images of women, that’s what. I started out on my journey as a feminist a long time ago so I do not know why it’s taken me this long to feel afaid of Patriarchy. I have been noticing that in the last 10-15 years we have entered a new dark age where any image of a woman is either soft porn or defined as not being porn as she is no longer fuckable.

I found this great site Lads’ mags which is worth reading just for the comments alone, and although it wasn’t a new idea to me it did something to my head.

I have just been to the local corner shop to top-up my electricity card and was greeted by the magazine rack that was just a huge collage of thin young woman pushing and pouting and thrusting flesh into the face of the viewer. Magazines, newspapers, even things aimed at women seemed to be heaving with porn. The only thing that did not was ‘Mother and Baby’ but then the woman on the front of that one was no longer staring out at you, but at her baby (she was still white, middle class and thin).

AAAAAARGGGGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!!

Fear, curling, snaking fear gripped my insides. This is what my sons see. This is what, everyday, I am battling against to bring them up to be good women-respecting guys. I only hope that they have some good examples in their uncle and father.

I am not meant to exist in that weird magazine world. I am fat, inelegant, getting older and I don’t care. I don’t wear make-up or care how many men want to fuck me. I don’t want to alter my body or what I wear, I want to be comfortable and feel confident in my tie-dye. I have marked myself out as not being one-of-the-crowd and I don’t care what the crowd think. I don’t conform and I don’t live in fear of men so I should not really exist.

That’s what makes me so afraid.

Parties are all evil!

What is it with me and parties? Even if I don’t go they still get me! This is the story of a party I went to but it upset me sooooooooo much that I cried all the way home and had to be put to bed with a story and to be tucked in.

A friend of mine invited us to a party. “The kid’s party starts at 4 and then the Adult party starts at 7.30” He said.

So we turned up at 4 with my children all dressed up for a party. My 3 years old son was so excited to be going to a party; he had dressed up as a ninja in his new dressing up set and was pulling ninja poses at anyone who looked at him. When we arrived we were told that the “kid’s party” was US and the only other person he had invited with kids was someone who hates me and not likely to turn up. So we sat in a big empty room trying to explain to my excited son that there were no other children. We sat there…and sat…Rob went off to smoke with the boys in a place I can’t take the kids because it’s smoky…I was offered a drink but all the really nice party food was covered up until the real guests arrived. It was so not a party, it was before-a-party. The people who lived there were having showers, walking about with towels on and putting make-up on in their bedrooms. So I sat with two bored kids for a few hours until some people started to turn up and about 7ish.

I said to Rob that I thought we would have to go when the ‘adult party’ started but he said “no, don’t be silly” because he has been brought up in a large family where the children are the party and the adults sit around a huge pile of squabbling, kissing, playing group of brothers, sisters and cousins. But I knew better…

I asked “So…when is the adult party starting?”

“Erm..7.30”

“Do you want me to get the kids out of the way?”

“Er…yes”

So there it was. I had to leave just as they were uncovering the food, putting out bowls of olives and all the other guests were arriving. Osiris was gutted, he could see he was about to miss out on the real party, he’s not stupid. Rob walked me home but he did go back to the party afterwards and stayed out until 5 in the morning when he bimbled home with tales of how great it was and how much MDMA he did.

Cross? I was cross and upset and insulted and here is for why…

· One of the reasons given for the ‘no kids’ thing was they had candles and there was smoking. As a mother I will make the decisions on whether the environment is safe for my children. Yes, I would have taken them home from a drunken mass of smoking people on drugs; I’m not going to risk their health so I wasn’t going to stay very much longer anyway.

· ‘Kid’s party’ kind of implies that there will be other children there. The people there could have least made an effort, some of them were downright rude to Osiris and were trying to wind him up. Luckily my son is a wise little child and when one man refused to see Osiris’ imaginary Alien Watch, Osiris turned around and said “This man’s being silly”.

· I don’t mind if people are having a party were it would not be appropriate for kids, I can get a babysitter.

· I resent the fact that EVERYONE assumed it was me going home with the kids and Rob would stay and have fun.

· I know they meant well but I was made to feel unwelcome and in the way. They shouldn’t have bothered…oh they didn’t, just paid lip service to the woman with the kids. I know that I wouldn’t have gone to the party if I had not been specifically invited. The whole experience made me feel horrible and resentful and…well, I won’t be rushing out to any more parties.

HAPPY MABON

Mabon
Autumn Equinox, 2nd Harvest, September 21st

Mabon, (pronounced MAY-bun, MAY-bone, MAH-boon, or MAH-bawn) is the Autumn Equinox. The Autumn Equinox divides the day and night equally, and we all take a moment to pay our respects to the impending dark. We also give thanks to the waning sunlight, as we store our harvest of this year's crops. The Druids call this celebration, Mea'n Fo'mhair, and honor the The Green Man, the God of the Forest, by offering libations to trees. Offerings of ciders, wines, herbs and fertilizer are appropriate at this time. Wiccans celebrate the aging Goddess as she passes from Mother to Crone, and her consort the God as he prepares for death and re-birth.

Various other names for this Lesser Wiccan Sabbat are The Second Harvest Festival, Wine Harvest, Feast of Avalon, Equinozio di Autunno (Strega), Alben Elfed (Caledonii), or Cornucopia. The Teutonic name, Winter Finding, spans a period of time from the Sabbat to Oct. 15th, Winter's Night, which is the Norse New Year.

At this festival it is appropriate to wear all of your finery and dine and celebrate in a lavish setting. It is the drawing to and of family as we prepare for the winding down of the year at Samhain. It is a time to finish old business as we ready for a period of rest, relaxation, and reflection.

Symbolism of Mabon:
Second Harvest, the Mysteries, Equality and Balance.

Symbols of Mabon:
wine, gourds, pine cones, acorns, grains, corn, apples, pomegranates, vines such as ivy, dried seeds, and horns of plenty.

Herbs of Maybon:
Acorn, benzoin, ferns, grains, honeysuckle, marigold, milkweed, myrrh, passionflower, rose, sage, solomon's seal, tobacco, thistle, and vegetables.

Foods of Mabon:
Breads, nuts, apples, pomegranates, and vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, and onions.

Incense of Mabon:
Autumn Blend-benzoin, myrrh, and sage.

Colors of Mabon:
Red, orange, russet, maroon, brown, and gold.

Stones of Mabon:
Sapphire, lapis lazuli, and yellow agates.

Activities of Mabon:
Making wine, gathering dried herbs, plants, seeds and seed pods, walking in the woods, scattering offerings in harvested fields, offering libations to trees, adorning burial sites with leaves, acorns, and pine cones to honor those who have passed over.

Spellworkings of Mabon:
Protection, prosperity, security, and self-confidence. Also those of harmony and balance.

Deities of Mabon:
Goddesses-Modron, Morgan, Epona, Persephone, Pamona and the Muses. Gods-Mabon, Thoth, Thor, Hermes, and The Green Man.

Mabon is considered a time of the Mysteries. It is a time to honor Aging Deities and the Spirit World. Considered a time of balance, it is when we stop and relax and enjoy the fruits of our personal harvests, whether they be from toiling in our gardens, working at our jobs, raising our families, or just coping with the hussle-bussle of everyday life. May your Mabon be memorable, and your hearts and spirits be filled to overflowing!

“I spank and I’m proud”

This was the title of yet another documentary showing the lives of parents that you’re glad you are not. It was on last night on ITV and I didn’t want to watch it because I knew it would upset me but instead it made me laugh an’ I’ll tell you for why…

Where do they get these people??? One woman was clearly mad and talked about herself in the third person (“Daddy said ‘Angela, go to bed’ and Angela went to bed”), a couple who were the Slobs, a couple who beat their children because the bible tells them so and a couple who had just lost their temper with their kid and didn’t really know what else to do.

After the first part of the program that showed them all beating their kids I started to think I was the world’s BEST MUM; apparently ¾ of parents smack their kids. After the initial ‘shock factor’ of seeing a grown woman chase three kids around a kitchen table beating them with a spatula there was an advert break that contained an appeal for the NSPCC. I had to laugh or cry or go to bed at this point; I chose to laugh and continue watching.

The program rounded everything up by trying to help the families. The mad woman was sent to a Harley Street Specialist who showed her video of her beating her children and tried to explain why it was causing her children psychological harm as well as physical. She refused to listen and said she will continue to beat her children, even though one of them was getting big enough to beat her back. Another child ‘expert’ went round to see Mr. and Mrs. Nice-middle-class who hung their heads in shame and said they will never do it again

The program left me feeling a few things. I felt glad that I did not hit my children and a bit smug that I wasn’t Spatula Woman – BUT that is how I was meant to feel, that was the whole point of the program, to make all us parents feel slightly superior or guilty depending on our point of view. I also felt there-for-the-grace-of-the-Lady-go-I as I have been very close to smacking and it’s always been because I’ve lost my temper, not because of anything that he had done that was extra naughty. But I never have hit him so…phew! I do shout a lot and I have come away from watching that program thinking that I have to STOP SHOUTING!

It’s all to easy to make a program about parents because we all do it differently and we all think we are right. We are made to believe we are watching something very important that is commenting on our society and we have a right to have an opinion…but nobody is listening to us because we are just watchers, viewers, and all we are really doing is twitching our curtains and bitching about the neighbours.

More crapness to make women feel shit about not being 19 years old

Crap thing 1: There is a L’Oreal advert on at the moment which has Jane Fonda telling you that as you get older your skin “lets you down”. Does this mean it starts leaking and letting the rain in? Does it stand you up when you have arranged a drink? At least you’ve bloody got some! I am covered in eczema and am grateful everyday that it is not as bad as I have seen on some people. Ask a burns victim about skin ‘letting you down’. Hmmmf. Oh and then she says “I’m 68” as if she is announcing something SO amazing that you can hardly credit it. “I’m not young and I’m daring to be on your TV. It must be the product that makes me so bold. Can you believe a woman can get to be so old?” Now, I didn’t think 68 was that old in a world where the oldest woman is 122 and lives in a shack without any skin products. SO, sorry Jane but you have a few years to go until we are all impressed with your ability to stay alive past your ‘male fantasy’ sell-by date.

Crap thing 2: I innocently bought some toothpaste by Colgate that claimed to help reduce gum disease; my gums are a bit sore at the moment. Rob was brushing his teeth and I heard him laughing to himself, when I went to see what had happened he pointed to a sentence on the tube of toothpaste that said

“Clinically proven to protect against time”

That is some outrageous claim. Protect against time????? Well, that will be really useful then. What clinical trials were carried out then and I’d really like to see the results.

All clearly bonkers.

The thing is, you only need turn your head 90 degrees away from the TV to look at the people around you (or in a mirror if you live alone) to see that the world is not populated with thin ‘beautiful’ young women who act like a soft porn actress every time she says something to a man. The real world is populated by a load of us ugly women and men, and I don’t mean Eastenders…the real world, you know, not on a screen, not the documentary about the fat teenager or the one about ‘crazy weirdos’ who breastfeed their 5 year olds. The real people who live next door to you, who work with you, who are your friends…we are all ugly or fat or thin or funny shaped…maybe, just maybe, we are the normal ones.

Guess what…we get old too!

Birthday blues

Well I turned 33 yesterday and I sulked all day. Rob and I went to see a really crap film – Pirates of the Caribbean 2 – and ate burgers and it cheered me up a little bit but I’m still left with a slight feeling of URH!

Maybe it’s because I ate so much chocolate! I did have an enormous amount bought for me from Hotel Chocolate (Thanks everyone!) so maybe the alcohol and sugar levels in my blood were just too high.

I’m quite glad to have got it over and done with really.

A few weeks ago someone asked me how old I was and I answered 33 and she said “No, not for a few weeks yet” In the kind of way that was saying I was adding years I had no right to claim! I felt a bit put out but I didn’t know who was being the more childish, me for ‘adding’ those weeks, or her for caring.

Lots of things have happened which I shall blog about (another party, another pointless reason for leaving the house) but right now I am about to go to the Doctor because Rob has gone on and on at me about it. As Rob is not actually coming with me, as he said he would, I’ve not got much to say to the Doc. I went for a test for anaemia…well it takes no genius to discover I am a bit iron deficient but I hardly think that having more iron will fix all my problems. Rob keeps going on about it like it will.

Stressed? Tired? Had 5 hours sleep that was broken because I had to feed Osiris 8 times? Rob in bed ‘cos he’s “so tired” after playing computer games all night? Skint? Too many bills? Bailiff visits? The house is disgusting? Nothing to eat off because there has been no attempt at washing up in a week and the kitchen is about to be declared a biological hazard? I’m loosing my mind and finally I crack….

It’s not my life…It’s that I’m ill and I need to see a doctor…apparently! So off I go because Rob said he would leave me if I didn’t.

Somehow I don’t think this is the solution.

Answers on a postcard please….

Thought crimes 2006

Who would have thought an Orwellian future would creep up on us in the disguise of a ‘war on terror’.

Let me explain….A few days ago the police arrested some Muslim men for ‘Terrorist Training’. Sounds scary eh? A terrorist boot camp in the heart of England? NO! They were playing paintball.

Hang on…playing paintball?

Arh yes, but they were using it as training to be a terrorist.

Erm…does anybody else see why this is ludicrous?

I don’t believe that there are many people who, when playing paintball, don’t imagine themselves to be using a real gun and they are James Bond/Super spy/army sniper/ninja/life or death movie hero or something other than a normal person who has paid good money to run around in a wood and play a really silly game of shooty-shooty. So the crime these chaps were committing was that they thought about being a terrorist as they shot their paintballs. A THOUGHT CRIME!

These guys might have been plotting and planning a terrorist attack, they might have been using the paintball session to practice their marksmanship, they might have….but if all the evidence the police can manage is they were playing paintball it’s not much to go on.

The owner of the paintball place said that they had a lot of Muslims use their facilities because they served Halal food….Hey, loads of Muslims all in one place shooting at things…they must be up to something.

Is it just me or the more the media say I should be scared of Terrorists, I am becoming more afraid of the powers of the police and state.

A Pagan vs. Catholic version of the world

I’m not shy in saying I am a pagan. I’m not out to convert anyone or ‘spread the word’ but I do like people to know that there is an alternative to the patriarchal monotheistic options they are usually presented with. I am more than happy to talk about theology and I respect everyone’s spiritual path is unique to them. I take great pains to make sure that Paganism is understood not to be devil-worship or an anti-Christian movement (Although Christians have often been very anti-pagan).

So imagine my surprise when two people in a baby group made a joke about what I got up to in the week that included goat sacrificing, devil worshiping and church burning. I kind of laughed along and then said “I don’t worship the devil, that’s a Christian concept”

“Oh sorry, Lucifer then” Came the reply.

“No” I said, not sure if the woman was winding me up “That’s Christian, I’m a pagan.”

“Well, who do you worship then?” She asked.

“The Goddess” I said, not wanting to go into the subtle difference between ‘worshiping’ and ‘communing with’. This was basic theology here so talking about the different names and aspects of the Goddess would have to wait too.

“So who’s the bad one then?” She asked.

“????” Said I.

“Well, if there is a Goddess there has to be an anti-Goddess.” She stated.

“No…No…erm…everything’s good, it’s all good. Nothing’s bad…” I stammered, not having been confronted with this one before.

“Death’s not good”

I was on solid ground again now “No, there has to be death so there can be life, there must be decay for there to be growth…”

“Sound a bit weird to me!” She declared and walked away!

So there we have it, an intelligent woman who was brought up a catholic being unable to grasp the concept of the world not falling into the easy concepts of good and evil.

If we are all brought up with this world view – and I say ‘all’ because the major world religions all have this concept – then it must be very hard to not automatically look for a thing’s evil opposite.

Man says “So MAN = good. Erm…an anti-man, what could that be I wonder… {Looks around a bit}…arh, there’s something that is not man, it’s woman…that must be anti-man then. Woman = bad.”

It sounds too simple to be true but in a lot of places and a lot of minds woman = bad. Sadly even in the mind’s of some women.

Skull and bones

On a brief foray into American culture and conspiracies therein my other half has been reading about a group called SKULL AND BONES. You can read about it here.

Basically it is a ‘secret’ society that George W Bush belongs to and so do lots of top media and government men. They take their recruits from Yale, are very exclusive and both candidates for in the last US election belong to it. It was set up as a reaction to the Masons. One source I read said they were the anti-masons but surely they are just another version; anti-masons are normal people who do not belong to secret societies and hire workers on the basis of skill and not connections.

SO WHAT’S NEW? I say. Jobs for the Boys is as old as boys having jobs. What’s new about a system that promotes people because of their connections to money, power or just because they went to the same school? ‘The old school tie’ is well worn in an interview.

A system already exists to usher out the women and the working class from the good jobs, it’s called the patriarchy!

Breastfeeding tag (meme???)

How many children have you breastfed and for how long?

Two – Osiris is 3 ½ and Solomon is 9 months and they are both still feeding.

What were your reasons for breastfeeding?

We have a serious allergy to cow’s milk in my family – if my brother had been bottle fed he would have become just another SIDS statistic. I also wanted to find out what these huge dangly things on my front were for.

Who was the most supportive member of your family?

My mother who told me “Everyone con breastfeed, don’t be silly” whenever I expressed any worries about not having enough milk.

Were your husband/partner/babies father/significant other (male or female) supportive?

He just took it for granted that that is what babies do –suckle. He helped out a lot during the first few difficult nights and has supported me all the way. Now that I realise that the way you feed your baby is political I find we share politics of the body as well as of the mind.

Did you have any support from a group or Breastfeeding councillor?

Yes – I went along to my local breastfeeding support group – BIBS – and talked to their councillor there. I now help run the group and am due to help set up a sister group next week. The women I met there were amazing and I have made some good friends.

How do the majority of your friends feed their children?

Before I had Osiris I only knew bottle feeding mums but now I know loads of breast feeders.

Has breastfeeding changed the way you feel about your body?

Wow YES! I used to hate my breasts but now I love them!

What do you wish you had been told about breastfeeding?

I wish somebody had been honest with me about how hard it was to get going.

What was the most surprising thing about breastfeeding?

That the milk did not come out of one hole in the middle of my nipple but out of loads of holes all over the place.

Where did you first publicly feed?

In the DSS of all places! I tried to build a barrier with a load of blankets so nobody could see my breasts but I think I just looked silly and drew more attention to myself.

Is there anything you would change about your breastfeeding experience if you could?

I would have got someone to look at my positioning sooner. I had sore nipples for ages and I just needed to ask for help. I wish I did not have eczema on my nipples too; it really hurts!

What advise would you give to someone who was about to start breastfeeding?

Don’t listen to anyone else but your baby and your body. If your baby seems hungry then feed it, if it seems sad then cuddle it; you’re not going to ‘spoil’ your baby by loving it too much.

Who are you tagging with this meme?

Maia

Playing it by ear

It’s not a sin to eat chocolate!

It’s my birthday next week and I have said all I want is some chocolate from Hotel Chocolate. It’s truly the nicest I ever eaten and totally worth the stupid amount of money it costs. Rob, being the wonderful man that he is, has organised a delivery of £48 worth of the yummy stuff to arrive soon! He loves me and he understands that I really like chocolate.

It’s not just a woman’s thing, this love of chocs; my stepfather is just as smitten with it, especially Easter eggs.

Chocolate is not the only high calorie food in the world, just think of toffees, cream cakes, pizza, anything processed is high in fat and low in nutrients and yet chocolate has a bad press and an association with ‘hormonal’ women.

My stepNana phoned up yesterday and when I told her about my impending choco-feast she was horrified. She kept saying “No, it’s not good, it’s terrible” and when I said my only plan was to take to my bed and eat chocolate she was mortified. Now this is the woman who took my mum to one side when I was a teenager and told her she had to stop me getting so fat, so her opinions on fatness are known to me. She did not have the same reaction to the idea of a huge Chinese take-away which has probably more fat and calories than some good chocolate.

I didn’t think much of her reaction until this morning when I started to feel guilty for thinking about my present. Her small comments had seeped through the cracks of my fat-girl armour and started to make me feel judged. I’ve spent a long time feeling comfortable with the way I look – the Goddess knows I’ve tried dieting and I believe I am meant to be a cuddly soft pillow of a woman. Part of feeling OK with myself is not letting other people judge me on what I eat. Part of the fat person’s problem with food is that it becomes a secret. ‘Bad’ foods become the thing you want when you are not allowed to have them and having gone through years of ‘binge and purge’ I don’t want to go back there again!

SO bollocks to her…it’s not a sin to eat chocolate and to like it and want it. If I was 8 stone the silly woman wouldn’t have made those comments. I know plenty of thin women and men who enjoy the yummieness of the cocoa bean. It’s people like her who perpetuate the horrible feeling inside that makes a fat person want to eat in secret and binge.

Death of Steve Irwin – Is anyone surprised?

Well I certainly wasn’t!

He was stung by a stingray whilst filming. Tell me, was he taking the appropriate safety precautions to film a beautiful animal in it’s natural habitat undisturbed or was he trying to stick his thumb right up it’s butthole?

I am sorry the guy’s dead, death is always sad BUT pissing off a stingray…the clue’s in the name there Steve. They only sting when they are really pissed off. My mother was swimming with stingrays a few weeks ago and she managed to not be killed and she’s really good at pissing off people. (Perhaps she would have been in more danger if she had been setting physics homework for the stingrays)

It cannot even be argued that the danger came with the job; David Attenborough seems to be alive and well and countless other wildlife presenters and photographers.

The crocodiles must be furious; they had first dibs on a bite of Irwin surely?

Although I know he did a lot for conservation ect, the guy made a living out of upsetting animals and then going on about how dangerous they are when provoked and it wasn’t even that entertaining.

Does anybody remember the baby waving incident where his daughter was wafted out over the crocs along with a hunk of meat? People said he was a professional and knew what he was doing. Well…he’s got himself killed now which puts that baby's safety in a whole new light, doesn’t it?

Breastfeeding is a feminist issue

Yeah yeah tell me something new!

I was in town today and I spotted a woman trying to breastfeed her baby. I say ‘trying’ because she was not having much luck, what with her baby and most of her being covered by some weird feeding tent. I couldn’t see the baby, or her breast – that was the point of the tent I guess – but I could see her frustration and desperation to feed her baby. The ironic thing is that she was sitting outside an underwear shop where there was a huge picture of a woman in a bra.

I really wanted to go and sit next to her and feed my baby too or to chat about the local groups she could go to and feel comfortable feeding. I didn’t and now I wish I had. I hope she doesn’t give up feeding because she just felt so damn self-conscious.

The male gaze is everywhere and we are made to feel it upon us. Being a sexual object = ok, feeding baby = feel shameful and cover up unless you’re one of those crazy mums off that breastfeeding program!

Learning something new = learning something old

In the last couple of days what I have seen Solomon do is amazing. I was a little sceptical of the idea of EC but I thought I’d give it a go. The first day I made ‘psssss’ing noises when he did a wee. I completely failed to get any of his wees or poohs in the potty and was starting to feel as if I wasn’t a good enough mum to recognise when he wanted to go to the loo.

The second day I sat him on the potty, made the noise, pointed to his willy and lo and behold he did a wee! I thought maybe it was a co-incidence and he was going to do one anyway but today he has gone in his potty loads of times.

People have said to me “he didn’t use his potty, you just put him on there” but isn’t that how we start to potty train older children? Yes I did put him on there but he is defiantly learning to use his muscles.

I am amazed!

It’s not even as if I have sat with him day-in day-out looking at him and sitting him on the potty every five minutes. He’s also worn a nappy when we have been out of the house and when he is asleep. So I’d say we have only been doing this for about a quarter of the time. BLIMEY think what you could do if you were actually dedicated to your child and didn’t ignore him whilst you wrote your blog!

I am a convert! I don’t think we will be going nappy-less just yet but I’m bloody impressed so far.

Another cool mothering type thing; I was thinking about buying a ring sling to go with my back-pack style sling that I pop Solomon in. After looking at some prices and realising I don’t have £40 to spend, I rummaged around in my linen closet (HA – That’s what I call the stack of miscellaneous material things that get bunged in the cupboard with the boiler that doesn’t work) and found a beautiful piece of blue Indian material. I tied it around my body and stuck baby in it – hey presto the best sling ever.

The funny thing about all this ‘attachment parenting’ – and I know Maia and C will agree – is that we are not doing anything new; we are just rediscovering the old ways. When I had Osiris I did wonder what we did without nappies or prams or nappy rash cream or formula or….etc etc and over the last 3 years I have been discovering exactly what we did.

The wheel is only any good if you are going over a lovely smooth surface – it’s crap cross county as any festival pram-pusher will tell you!

I used to wonder why monkey and ape babies cling onto their mothers and yet our babies are born without this reflex. The evolutionary answer to this is that our babies are born ‘earlier’ than apes. Our brains are so big that to get the babies out of our bodies we have them prematurely. Perhaps we invented hide slings and then our big brain developed, not the other way around. An ape mother will not carry an infant too weak to cling to her but with a sling – ta da! Survival of the floppiest.

OK this is kind of attachment parenting 101 but I take a little time to work things out myself even if I’ve been told them a million times.

How is the EC going? part 2

Solomon at 8 months old did a wee in his potty! Wow!

Mermaid found!

Of course this is a feejee mermaid that is a clever piece of taxerdermy. For more pics go here. I find myself thinking what a creative challage that would be to make something like this and there is a little part of me that wants to retire to the seaside with a glue gun and some monkey skulls.

Still feeling glum

I don’t know if it is fallout from the Party Unpleasantness at the weekend and the fear of people involved in the Unpleasantness turning up in my life and making more Unpleasantness or pre-birthday blues (the thought of being 33 is a bit depressing) or just a general malaise but I am feeling like I want to crawl into bed and eat chocolate for a week.

I went out last night – thank you N – and left baby with Rob. When I returned I found he had spent the whole night crying himself sick (Baby, not Rob) and today he has lost his little voice. I feel bad but I needed that break else I dread to think what would have happened.

Today I felt the walls of the house close in on us. Rob had lost something and I couldn’t help him. I just wanted to get away and our little living space seemed to be to small to hold two crying children, a shouting Daddy and a Mum who just didn’t want to be there.

Don’t get me wrong…everyone in the house is fine but I am feeling as if everything I have to do is an imposition on the time I would like to spend reading.

I would like to write something witty and dynamic about classism but despite several attempts at a bloging I have got no further than a few words when the will to write has left me. So I am sorry about the current state of affairs and lack of feminist discourse. It’s all about me and my head at the moment.

How is the EC going?

My house is covered in pooh!

Elimination Communication

This means babies who don’t wear nappies! In a recent documentary Honey I suckle the kids! (A channel five program about attachment parenting) There were scenes of a mum holding her baby to wee anywhere he could. The patronising voice-over said “This means she has to do it up to 30 times a day”.

I’ve had a lot of people say to me “You do attachment parenting but you don’t do that do you?” and I’ve said “No way” But why have I said that? In the program there was a scene of a child walking around in pooh he had just done. Rob and I laughed as this is something that happens a lot in our house. The trick is to get the pooh off the floor before Baby decides he would like to see what it tastes like! (For all you non-parents out there this sounds disgusting but it is the reality of having children – sorry)

Osiris was in re-useable nappies for the first year of his life. After a while I realised he wasn’t weeing at night and so I left him bare at night from the age of about one and there have only ever been a few bed wettings. So I thought perhaps there is more to this idea of a child communicating his needs to wee and pooh.

So I’ve done a little reading around the subject here here and here.

Solomon does not wear a nappy if we are in the house. I know when he is about to pooh and follow him around with a baby wipe at-the-ready. N, you will laugh at this as you have experienced first-hand how my baby just goes where he likes. But I know roughly when he’s about to go.

So…I’m thinking…maybe if I have a potty instead of a baby wipe and start being a bit more attentive to what is going on…hmmm…less nappies, early potty training…it’s starting to make sense to me.

I’ve come from thinking that this was a crazy idea to thinking this is something we kind of already do, we just have to tune-in to the EC way!

I might be crazy but I’m going to give it a go! My plan is to let him go bum-free (Bum free, as free as the grass grows, as free as the wind blows – to the tune of Born free) at home and see if I can catch the ‘eliminations’ and make a special sound or sign for it. I might leave him in a cloth nappy at night as our bed is already covered in baby wee and I think any more might mean I sleep in a swamp. I will put him in a nappy when we go out but I think I will take it in little steps; I’ll just see how it goes.

I’ll let you know.

The Bad Party that sought me out

On Saturday night I was invited to a party to which I decided not to go to. I won't go into the boring details here but to cut a long story short there are some people that I would rather avoid and arguments that I would rather not get involved in.

So there I was, sitting at home NOT AT THE PARTY when the phone rang and all the unpleasantness I had been trying to avoid spewed out of the earpiece and polluted my mind anyway.

The arguments had been had. The unpleasantness was far worse than I could have possibly predicted and I was backed into a corner by a friend. I had to defend myself as to why I do not want to hang around with a bunch of physic vampires. I then had to turn on the answer phone and avoid the barrage of messages that were the fallout from me voicing how I felt for the first time in 4 years.

Urgh!

I had no sleep that night as the arguments that didn’t happen kept going around my head and the argument that did happen made me sad.

The long and short of this is: I have learnt to trust my gut feeling, (it’s only taken me 33 years) and you can run but you cannot hide from……

THE PARTY THAT SEEKS YOU OUT!

The Secret World

We all carry a secret world inside us. It’s very rare that we have a person in our lives that knows everything that has happened to us, even if we do, they have not lived through it and experienced all our emotions and feelings. We are walking memories. Every now and then one may surface and make us smile or haunt our dreams.

I look at another human and think What has happened to you that you will never talk about? What experience are you hiding?

What horrors, abuse, loss, heartbreak lie behind those thoughtful eyes? Have you ever thought you were going to die and looked straight into the face of eternity? Have you been lonely and sad? Have you tried to kill yourself or others? What has been done to your body and what did you see and feel when it happened? How can you still be here, sitting in front of me and talking and laughing?

But I know the answers to the last question for I am sitting here too and there was a time I thought I would never seem normal again. There was a time that I lay on the floor in a pool of blood calling out my dead friend’s name. I didn’t know how I would ever be able to stop crying.

I guess that’s what self-harm is all about; you have been to a place so dark and nasty that you need to remember that you were there. Even when I sit and smile and seem so confident, the snakes on my arms are writhing around my skin and making me remember…remember and say “Thank the Goddess I am not there anymore”.

So I wonder what is written on the skin of others, in the hearts of others, the memories. No matter how hard we repress it we are but collections of experiences. If we are here then we have survived.